Duality
by Exmatl
Summary: The digiworld is gone, but its remnants persist in the digidestined themselves; chosen children are able to form connections to strange forces beyond them. Evan Alterman is on a routine 'initiation' to Siojaton City. Nothing is as it seems... W.I.P.
1. Arrival

**Synopsis: Although the balance was disrupted decades ago, some scattered remnants of the digital world, and the digimon who inhabited it, still persist in a state of half-existence; the digidestined live on in the real world, and are able to 'connect' to these disembodied forces.**  
  
_This story is slow starting, but picks up a few chapters in. If you consider yourself an intelligent reader/writer, don't quit reading just because you're initially bored, or you don't see digimon digivolving all over the place. Only stop reading because you're hungry or your computer explodes or you detest my writing style or have something better to do. Is that so much to ask....? The 'R' rating is for language, and possible sexual content--not explicit, of course, but I chose 'R' because I wanted to keep my options open. Also, the story alternates POVs. When POV changes, the name of the person is ensconced by double-hyphens, i.e. '--John--'. More POVs in later chapters I hope._  
  
Chapter One  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
The young man took some time before he chose to break eye contact with the reflection that shone inside the smudged thick plastic window of the railcar.  
  
As he forced his gaze away and over his fellow subway passengers, his mind's eye held contact with that reflection, and knew it well....  
  
Youthful looks were one of many deceptions. A thin grey-lined spring jacket outlined a medium frame with slender yet defined shoulders; his left hand was tucked into one of the many compartments of his khaki pants, while his right hand served to grasp the overhead pole and reinforce his steadiness.  
  
Lost in his introspection, he might not have noticed his stop if not for the silent feeling of anticipation held by many of the passengers.  
  
Immediately, he released his grip on the pole and grabbed the strap of his duffel bag before easing his way out the sliding doors of the railcar and onto the subway platform.  
  
Men, women, and children--less of the latter this time of night--shuffled back and forth through, within, over and across various turnstiles, elevators, escalators, and staircases.  
  
Even three hours after midnight, the interstate railcar network was overcrowded. The young man threaded his way across the platform, up two flights of stairs, and through one turnstile before emerging onto the well-lit streets of Siojaton City.  
  
With his bag still in his right hand, he hailed a taxi with his left; half a minute later, he shuffled into the back seat of the cab.  
  
"Where to, sir?" the driver asked. The young man--whose name was Evan, if it matters--responded evenly, in a clear American accent. "Holiday Inn." The man at the wheel queried, "East Side or North Side?" and was met with a quick reply. "The East Side."  
  
For the next twenty minutes the young man made himself comfortable in the leather interior of the taxi and took the time to stare out the window and think of nothing but what he saw: the darkness of the night.  
  
At several intervals, the cabbie attempted to engineer idle conversation despite his limited English vocabulary, but was hindered by the young man's distant and terse responses.  
  
Eventually the cab pulled to the side of the road next to the hotel and the young man stepped out.  
  
The cabbie had judged the young man to be ignorant to the ways of the local currencies and so overcharged him a slight amount, but the young man didn't mind; he allowed the overcharge on account of the fact that the taxi driver did support three children, and would likely use the extra cash honorably.  
  
The young man stepped into the hotel and walked up to the attendant. She hailed him in English and was effectively communicative; less than two minutes later, he'd been granted his roomkey.  
  
He took the stairs up four flights and entered room #417. He unpacked his bag; he'd be staying here at least a few weeks. Until he knew for sure he'd settled things appropriately with the local children.  
  
As the young man lounged upon the queen-sized bed, he realized that now that he'd ended his travels for a time, he'd have a name; at that moment, he began to think of himself by name again.  
  
He had just unzipped his jacket and was about to hang it up when his cellular telephone rang. He quickly withdrew it and flipped it on, setting it to his ear. "Yeah, I'm here," he said into the phone.  
  
There was a good-natured laugh on the end of the other line. It was a smooth and carefree voice. The voice said, "You'd better hope I don't ask if you've arrived at your hotel yet, because then you'll have nothing to say."  
  
For half a second, Evan allowed himself a tiny smile, before responding in turn. "Same time tomorrow? Three in the afternoon?" As he spoke he felt as though he could see her nodding on the other end. All she said was, "Of course. And you're still sure you want to handle this on your own?"  
  
His face shifted back to its usual frown. "Why wouldn't I be? The initiation should be fairly straightforward. I can handle half a dozen kids."  
  
A few seconds passed during which he could hear only her light breathing on the other end of the line. He knew she was trying to feel him, connect.  
  
Finally, she said, "I hope you're not holding this too lightly, Evan. It certainly will mean a lot more to them than it could to anyone else." Another pause, and then, "They can't be digides...." she cut herself off. "....what they should be. You know things aren't the way they should be."  
  
His response was immediate. "I know. Amelia...." He let in a brief pause, and almost said something to her, but he cut himself short. He finished the sentiment with a single word. "Whatever." Evan hung up.  
  
The young man disrobed and slipped under the covers of his bed. All was silent, but he could not sleep. Eventually exhaustion quieted his thoughts, however, and his eyelids slipped closed before the clock struck five.  
  
By the time the first rays of dawn found their way across the streets of Siojaton City, he had fallen deeply asleep.  
  



	2. Chance

Chapter Two  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
As a thin ray of sunlight escaped through a slit between the blinds covering the window in room #417 on the fourth floor of the Holiday Inn and struck Evan Alterman's eyelids, his eyes shot open and he became instantly awake.  
  
He immediately sat half-up beneath the covers of the bed, propping himself up on his right elbow and checking his wristwatch. 14:35. "Ugh," he cursed.  
  
He pushed aside his fatigue--these nine hours had been the most sleep he'd gotten away with in weeks, and he found he wanted more of it--and dressed himself quickly before he made the call.  
  
"It's quarter to three here. Slept through the alarm," he told Amelia's voicemail. "I don't know why I didn't wake up...." As he nestled the cell phone between his ear and his shoulder, he bent down to remove a folded backpack from his duffel bag, and began to load it.  
  
He continued. "Listen. I'm going to try to make it to the school anyway. There's still time, I'll just have to cut a few corners." By now he was slinging the backpack over his shoulder as he searched through the pockets of his khakis for his wallet.  
  
"And you know I'll call you if anything unexpected happens," he concluded. He flipped the cell phone into his pocket as he shrugged on his grey-lined spring jacket and went on the door.  
  
He took the stairs down and out of the hotel, trusting his legs to carry him speedily; he couldn't risk any elevator difficulties.  
  
As he waved goodbye to the receptionist and exited the hotel, many thoughts were on his mind, such as I'll need transportation and The cabs don't really come down around here for pick-ups often and Is she into me? and I suppose I'll have to get a bike and There go my plans for a quiet afternoon stroll.  
  
In the far corner of the parking lot he discovered a single bicycle--a two-seater--but it was chained to a bike rack. Looking around, he spotted no potential witnesses, and made a quick decision.  
  
He materialized his ghost digivice and removed a short length of wire and tiny metal clamps. He hooked up his GD to the combination lock and focused.  
  
At this, a scanner beam shot out from the digivice, and the lock clicked open almost immediately and the chain fell to the pavement. He dematerialized his ghost digivice before swinging up onto the seat of the bike.  
  
Ten minutes later, he'd cycled into the central city. A light breeze stroked his face as he constantly increased his velocity.  
  
As he peddled faster and faster down the street, he reflected that bike-riding was an activity to which he'd almost forgotten the exhilaration. The feeling of the pedals against his boots and the sensation of fighting the wind, was one he made special note of; if he ever had free time, he would be sure to put this near the top of his list.  
  
His thoughts were immediately interrupted as the collision occurred; as his bike toppled to one side, he glanced briefly at the other bicycle that had cut into the main road from out of an alley.  
  
Evan quickly set out his foot to break his fall; the other rider did the same. Neither was harmed.  
  
Out of the corner of his eye suddenly noticed that his cell phone had slipped out of his pocket and onto the main road, where a passing car immediately crushed it under its wheel.  
  
Each rider sat up, and looked over the other briefly while mumbling apologies. Evan judged him to be fourteen or fifteen; he clothed himself in a hooded sweatshirt and jeans, with light hair and a youthful face.  
  
It was four minutes until Evan's appointment with the schoolmaster; there was no time to lose. They parted ways as their thoughts turned to other things.  
  



	3. Impossiblity

Chapter Three  
  
_--Ienji--_  
  
Less than a block away, Ienji was cataloging thick library books as he contemplated the events of the day.  
  
It had all seemed so surreal. He'd woken up this morning and felt like he was still dreaming. But it was real, now, he knew. He could feel it.  
  
Ienji was actually in the eleventh grade, despite his young face. That, and he'd skipped a grade; he was fifteeen and would turn sixteen in two months.  
  
He knew he was a pretty laid-back kid, well-liked but with a few close friends. Everyone called him Ien, but he called himself by his full name, when he thought of himself in his mind.  
  
A few minutes ago he'd been on his way to the school, where he had a job working in the library over the summer. He shelved books; it didn't pay very well, but it had its advantages.  
  
Then, something had happened, but he wasn't quite sure what it was.  
  
Well, yes, he knew that he'd crashed into another bike, and both of their travels had been delayed for about thirty seconds. But for some reason he felt that the collision was unimportant, that there had been something abstract.... but he couldn't figure out what it was.  
  
All he remembered was a brief feeling he'd had at the moment of actual impact, like a sudden surge, but it had been so fleeting, he hadn't a clear memory it.  
  
Ienji focused on that feeling, focused on it deeply, so deeply he didn't notice that he'd stopped shelving books, that his hand had stilled.  
  
He continued to focus on the feeling to the point where he was only aware of the sound of his own breathing and the remnant of the feeling amplified in his mind. He was not aware of moving his right hand forward; he was not aware of opening his palm as the ghost digivice materialized upon it.  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
The man peered across the desk through narrow glasses, somehow managing to hold the appearance of looking down on the new student before him, despite the schoolmaster's low stature.  
  
Evan could sense that the man had a distrustful view of youth, but could not discern the man's opinion of this the prospective student who sat before him. A cold, analytical feeling was all that he could sense of the man's thoughts as the fellow reviewed all the necessary documents.  
  
Finally, after some time, the schoolmaster finished looking over the papers. The man spoke. "Welcome to the Siojaton High School, Evan Ashton."  
  
When Evan took on an alternate identity, he liked to keep his first name for an alias whenever possible; it had been, in this task.  
  
Smiling benevolently, he thanked the man, who replied, "It is an honor to have such a prospective student in our house of learning. I only wish your parents had been able to attend to this; I look forward to meeting them." The schoolmaster's gladness at the transfer student's arrival did not reach his face.  
  
Evan sensed that the man was still slightly suspicious. He had arrived in Siojaton City last night with no cover family, having chosen to rely on bureaucratic impersonality rather than have some amateur 'actors' slow him down; he had no legal guardians outside of these documents.... the same documents that made his age seventeen instead of nineteen, and a junior in high school instead of a college dropout.  
  
He now realized that although such deceptions had been fairly effective in America, cultural--and personal--differences might lower its level of sufficiency in the foreign country of Japan.  
  
Again nodding in thanks, the young man sat up and bowed on his way out the door of the office.  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
Evan had just stepped outside the door of the school at the moment he felt it. The feeling passed through him like a tumultuous wave. For a moment he was frozen in place with the sheer impossibility of it; they'd calculated this out of the equation. This hadn't happened in.... this had never happened before.  
  
Taking action, he sensed the place at which the link was being forged. It was just east of here, in the library, perhaps. He launched himself into the air and landed on the seat of the bike.  
  
He didn't know whether he could make it there on time, or if it would make a difference, but either way, he was pedaling harder than ever before.  
  
Seventy-one seconds later, Evan threw the bike onto the pavement as he braked in front of the library and leaped up the steps and through the double-doors.  
  
Now that he was in closer range he knew exactly where the link was occurring. He raced through the library, ignoring the disapproving looks of both visitors and staff.  
  
As he made his way to the source of the event, he materialized his ghost digivice. He knew he'd need it.  



	4. The Forging

Chapter Four  
  
_--Ienji--_  
  
Expressionless, Ienji looked down upon the strange contraption that had suddenly appeared in his hand.  
  
It was metallic cobalt hue, smoothed yet shaped irregularly, but at the same time seemed to lack corporeality; it felt real enough as he turned it over in his hands inquisitively, but at the same time he strongly felt that it did not exist in the same way as everything else.  
  
As he inspected the device, it seemed to glow, an unseen light pulsing out from within it. No, that wasn't right--it wasn't a light so much as a mist, neither dark nor bright, just hazy.  
  
There was something else he felt, too, in the depths of his being--like was touching something, getting closer to something. He felt as if a connection was forming between himself and something out of this world.  
  
But through all this, Ienji felt very calm, as though maybe some part of him felt that this needed to happen....  
  
--Evan--  
  
Twenty seconds later, he had arrived in the History Reference section, a tiny, mostly unvisited section of the library. Adjacent to a partially unloaded book cart was a boy with a vacant look; the same kid Evan had crashed bikes with less than an hour earlier. He couldn't recall his name.  
  
In the kid's hand was an active ghost digivice.  
  
Moving quickly, Evan held out his digivice in defensive position. He'd been taught this method several years ago, but never thought he'd have to use it.  
  
He concentrated on a negation, an equalizing data stream. It was, in the end, all data; if he supplemented it correctly, he could nullify the rapidly building forces of the digital reaction.  
  
As the digital beam burst from his own GD, he sensed the kid's digivice anticipate the maneuver and shift bases; as the beam of his digivice collided with the data flow that linked the kid and the other digivice, both he and Evan were thrown against opposing walls in the resulting shock wave.  
  
--Ienji--  
  
As Ienji hit the wall, he was jolted out of the trance he'd locked himself into. Immediately all the digital activity dispersed, and the area resumed its role as the mundane reference section of the library once more.  
  
"What.... happened here?" he finally asked. He remembered everything that had happened, but while it had happened, he'd been in a different state of mind; now it was over, but he felt different, very different, and had many questions for the other, who was just getting to his feet.  
  
Ienji could tell that last impact had taken a lot out of him; the other groaned as he stood up. "Deja vu...." Ienji heard him mutter.  
  
Suddenly, the other looked up, as though recognizing Ienji for the first time. For a few seconds their eyes met uncertainly, until the other broke off, redirecting his gaze to the ground and sighing heavily.  
  
--Evan--  
  
After picking himself up off the ground, Evan had immediately felt in his pocket for his cell phone; he'd need to tell Amelia about this. It was only after his jacket pocket turned empty that he had a brief flashback and saw his cell phone fly out of his pocket and get crushed under the wheel of a car.  
  
Cursing to himself--the kid didn't flinch at the language, being unable to recognize American profanity--he asked the kid, "Are you carrying a cell phone?"  
  
The kid shook his head in response before responding verbally. "My house is a five-minute bike ride from here, though."  
  
Evan considered this for a moment before nodding. "That would be fine."  
  



	5. Distance

Chapter Five  
  
_--Ienji--_  
  
The two pedaled through the streets of East Siojaton City at a brisk pace.  
  
Actually, it was a bit faster than a brisk pace; Ienji had to pedal twice as fast on his smaller bicycle just to keep up.  
  
Since that awkward moment in the library, when Ienji had offered to let the other use his home phone and they had made introductions, there hadn't been much dialogue.  
  
Whenever Ienji tried to broach the subject of the strange experience they'd both taken part in, Evan merely ignored him. After a while he stopped trying; he wouldn't let his new aquaintance's rudeness get to him.  
  
Ienji had a reputation as a calm, collected youth, and so he saw no reason to ruin it by incessantly badgering the fellow. He would reign in his curiosity until Evan chose to explain the strange events.  
  
A few minutes later both bicycles slowed to a stop outside the apartment complex in which Ienji's family made a living.  
  
As they stepped down off their bikes, Ienji appraised Evan's vehicle, "You know, I think my grandparents have the same model bike as that. At the moment they're visiting old friends who are staying at the local Holiday Inn, as I recall."  
  
Evan seemed to freeze in place before muttering a short word in English. Ienji didn't know much English, but he figured it was a curse word. Half a second later, Evan was moving toward the entrance to the apartment building as if nothing had happened.  
  
Again, Ienji hurried to keep up with him. The two boys went through the double-doors and straight to a lift, per Evan's direction, of course.  
  
"What is your room number?" Evan asked as the doors to the lift closed. "Seven one four," Ienji supplied, taking the initiative to press the floor button.  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
As the lift slowly rose up the building, thoughts continued to race through Evan's mind.  
  
He'd managed accept the impossibility of the occurence--that this kid, who happened to be, by freak accident, one of the children's Evan had come to Siojaton to see to, and that the kid had been petitioned at an arbitary time, without someone to guide him, yet still survived in this world--but that didn't solve the problem of what to do with him.  
  
Evan knew that the wisest recourse would be to call Amelia, get in touch with the others, try to sort this thing out.  
  
However, he couldn't tell his mind to quit calculating.  
  
Assuming it was an isolated incident, they'd need to run a few diagnostics, sends someone down to make sure everything was under control.  
  
He wasn't sure what to tell the kid, Ienji. He knew what he'd been suppose to tell him, but in the day's happenings, things had changed.  
  
The kid wasn't ready for any of this. No one could be, of course.... and although what had happened in the library was supposed to be a natural occurrence, the times had changed.  
  
It wasn't just a transdimensional petition, it was the bestowing of a curse.  
  
His thoughts were interrupted as the doors opened onto the seventh floor.  
  
Evan allowed Ienji to lead the way. The kid did have a key; Evan could have hooked up his GD to the lock, but there was obviously no reason to escalate the events of the day and potentially confuse things.  
  
As soon as the kid had opened the door, Evan strode in, glancing around the living room of the apartment in search of a phone. He immediately spotted one and walked over to it, picking it up.  
  
There was a low, soft couch next to the phone; Evan took a seat on the cushion adjacent to the nightstand with the phone set upon it, while Ienji took the opposite seat,  
  
He had to employ Ienji's help in making a call to a foreign country; specifically, the United States.  
  
A minute later he'd dialed it, and the phone was ringing on the other end.  
  
_--Ienji--_  
  
Although Ienji could not understand most of what they were talking about--he could only hear the one side of the conversation, and spoke very little English--what he did understand was enough to make him wonder.  
  
They were talking about someone. [i]Me[/i], Ienji figured. Evan seemed to be upset about something; he was posing quite a few questions to whoever was on the other end, and appeared to be answering just as many.  
  
Several times Ienji caught a tense of the verb "know" used in the context of the pronoun "he". From this, he intuited that Evan was discussing how much to tell him, which Ienji found rather affronting. But, he kept his silence.  
  
Ienji decided that he might as well try to figure out what had happened in the library, himself. How, exactly, had it started? He'd been shelving books, and then he'd been focusing on the memory of that feeling....  
  
At this, the strange contraption--the one he'd seen before--materialized in front of him. Before Ienji himself could react, Evan's head jerked toward the recently-appeared translucent device. He said something brief into the phone, then set it back on the hook with a click.  
  
Ienji's concentration broke, and the device disappeared. He noticed the other looking at him oddly. There was a five-second silence, then Evan spoke.  
  
"I need to speak to you of this," he said.  



	6. Explanation

Chapter Six  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
As Evan turned to Ienji, about to explain, he found he couldn't.. Physically. He had expected to have days to prepare; he knew only basic Japanese.  
  
Still, he knew he must, immediately. He was there primarily to guide these children through this, certainly, but the explaining was no less important. False conclusions, self-deception, and every other aspect of the the 'human condition', made the change something to be approached delicately.  
  
He considered taking some time--maybe a few hours, a day, a night--to think through his word; but, he couldn't ignore the fact that the kid had managed to materialize his digivice, twice. As such, Evan knew that the kid's empathy must have set in already, which would leave him open to a lot of strange feelings. And there was no telling when any of the non-standard 'abilities' might begin to manifest; or to what degree volatility they might do so.  
  
Instead, he sighed and, choosing his words carefully, hazarded an explanation.  
  
_--Ienji--_  
  
Ienji recognize that Evan spoke with a limit vocabulary; he assumed that the other was American, and spoke English as a first language.  
  
As a student of Siojaton High School, he had taken classes in English, but had only barely passed, despite many hours of intense studying. So, he did not attempt to communicate with Evan in the American's own language.  
  
As the Ienji listened to Evan's explanation, he corrected verb tenses and mispronounced synonyms it in his mind.  
  
What he heard and understood might have sounded like this, if it were translated back into English.  
  
"The reason for these things is big and long and complicated," Evan said, making obvious his meager experience with the language. Ienji said nothing.  
  
Ienji had been thinking through all this, of course, but for some reason had kept his calm throughout. He figured himself to be in shock or denial; any normal person would have called the police or sought immediate medical attention through all of this.  
  
At this, Evan interrupted the beginning of his speech to say, "You are an ordinary person no longer."  
  
Ienji blinked. "How did you....? Did you read my mind?"  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
Evan shook his head. "No, it is only empathy. Likes touching the tips of your thoughts, and emotions. With practice, it can work like...." Evan did not know how to say 'telepathy' in Japanese. He resolved to look it up later as he continued his sentence. "....reading the mind."  
  
"But," he added, "I have not yet reached that part of this conversation. I must explain to you the origin of these things." Ienji nodded, and Evan continued.  
  
"For many years--no one is certain how long--there was another place. Another world like this one. Its...." Evan searched his mind for the word.... "....structure is electronic, digital. That world, the 'digital world' and this world, the 'real world', are connected. Whatever happens in that world may affect this world." He paused to see if his words had sunk in.  
  
Ienji appeared to be contemplating this deeply; Evan reflected that the kid seemed very mature, especially for his age. He continued.  
  
"Because of this connection, on rare days, people from this world would be petitioned to help the digital world. There were strange...." He decided the word 'animals' would suffice--"animals who lived in the digital world. Some of the animals were good and some were bad, a little like people."  
  
Evan allowed another pause after this. He thought he was doing a fairly good job of communicating this with the language barrier in place.  
  
He went on. "No one knows exactly when it happened, but it was a few decades ago. Something happened, and now there is no digital world. There is only this world. But," he told Ienji, "some parts of the other world still exist in some ways. People in this world are still petitioned by the other world even though there is no other world any more."  
  
Ienji cut in. "Was I petitioned today?" Evan didn't let the smile reach his face, but nodded in response. "Yes. You were. A.... connection, was made between you and some of these remaining parts of the other world.  
  
"The device you were able to.... bring out.... is called a 'ghost digital device'. It is part of you now. You will also find yourself feeling the minds of other people. You will become familiar with it."  
  
With this, Evan quieted, and waited for Ienji to ask him the question.  
  
_--Ienji--_  
  
When Ienji realized that this was not a pause, and that the other had finished his short speech, he found he had many questions. But one seemed more important than the others, so he asked it first.  
  
"What do I do now?"  
  
Evan replied readily. "There is nothing you can do. The purpose for all that has happened to you, is no longer true, because there is no digital world. You must learn to...." He paused, and Ienji assumed he was searching for the right word. "....adapt to the new part of yourself. I have moved here temporarily, to guide you through this. However, there are a few other things of importance."  
  
Ienji listened concernedly as he went on. "This ghost digital device--which has many uses--and the empathy, are the two standard..... qualities, that all of us share. As you must have realized, I am like you."  
  
Evan paused for a second, opened his palm and briefly materialized and dematerialized his own ghost digital device. Ienji's eyes involuntarily flickered to his own hand.  
  
He continued. "Those of us who can do this are named...." He cut himself short before continuing. "....chosen children." For a moment Ienji felt that Evan had been about to say something else, but soon forgot about it as the other continued. "Because for some reason, only those between the ages of seven and nineteen have been petitioned."  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
Evan examined the kid as he spoke, and found that the kid wasn't a kid. At least, he seemed very calm about this.  
  
He decided that now was the most opportune time to put forward the knowledge that was bound to disturb this kid's composure.  
  
"I was petitioned a few years ago," Evan said. "Since then, I have met with others like me, like you, like us. Other chosen children. Many are in their twenties and thirties, although most are younger than you or me."  
  
He paused, and Ienji decided to put a word in. "And you knew I would be petitioned, so you came to Siojaton to see me?"  
  
He noticed Evan's hesitation before responding. "No. I did not know who would be petitioned. And there are others in Siojaton who will be soon, as well. They are your classmates, maybe even your friends or family. I hope that you will be able to help me find them, before it is too late."  
  
Evan noticed the expression on Ienji's face, and felt his mind shift significantly with this information.  
  
He felt he had communicated effectively. The kid seemed to have accepted what he'd learned particularly well. Which was excellent, considering the work they now had, finding the other digidestined. But despite all he'd told him, the most important thing had been left out.  
  
Ienji shouldn't have walked out of that library.  



	7. Night

Chapter Seven  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
Evan and Ienji exchanged farewells; Evan didn't know his hotel phone number, and he had seen his cell phone crushed between the car wheel with his own eyes--so he received Ienji's apartment phone number and promised to call the kid.  
  
Before he left, he explained that he'd be taking care of a few things tonight but would be certain to give him a call the next day.  
  
As Evan took the elevator down to the ground floor, his thoughts were troubled. The kid looked to be in middle school.... could he leave the kid alone in good conscience? He reflected that he, himself, had been comparable to Ienji's age when he'd been petitioned....  
  
But it would be an understatement to categorize those years as 'rough', and although Ienji seemed unexpectedly mature, Evan knew that'd he would age well enough in the coming years.  
  
Evan considered his plans. It was a Sunday and there was no school, but the school week began the next morning. He would need to prepare....  
  
_--Ienji--_  
  
Ienji gazed through the apartment windows and out into the night.  
  
He had let his eyes focus on the space beyond the windows for hours now. In that time, he had seen--and felt, he somehow knew--the thunderclouds rolled in slowly and blanketed the city, as if from all sides. Eventually the light had faded and flashes of lightning had become visible upon the horizon.  
  
A few minutes past, the rain had begun to fall.  
  
Ienji's felt that he was different. More somber, maybe.... no, it wasn't that. It was a feeling he couldn't place. It was as if he was not where he was supposed to be. He felt that the world was somehow wrong.  
  
His mother was his legal guardian, but she was never around. He'd didn't particularly mind; he liked having the apartment to himself.  
  
Ienji hadn't spoken aloud since Evan's departure. He had made himself a simple meal, and then spent an hour studying from his mathematics textbook. After a while he had set the volume down and commenced staring out the window.... and he had been doing so ever since.  
  
The rain thundered down. Ienji examined himself, and realized that he felt exceptionally.... solemn, 'mature'. He wondered if he had always been this way, and had simply not noticed until this moment.  
  
No, he mused, I have taken care of myself, and been independent, for some time, but such things do not make a man. I have felt this way since.... since the collision yesterday. Oh, wait.... that happened this morning..  
  
All of a sudden, Ienji felt a bit dizzy. He steadied himself and let it pass.  
  
The clock said it was ten at night. He knew that he must be rested for school in the morning, so he prepared for sleep.  
  
Ten minutes later, he had set his alarm for 7:30 A.M. and had fallen asleep.  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
His wristwatch read ten after ten, but Evan did not see it. He had been deep in conversation over the telephone for the better part of an hour.  
  
"You can't find anything on the kid? Anything at all?" he said again. "Not even an age?"  
  
He felt her hold back exasperation as she simply restated the explanation. "Siojaton public records are hard copy only--you know we can't leave a trail."  
  
"I know, I know," he sighed. "I don't mean to snap. I just keep wishing I'd only asked the kid his age. It's bad enough that we can't run diagnostics...."  
  
She didn't say anything. He could tell she was thinking.  
  
"You know," she finally said. "I think I have an idea...."  
  
"What's that?" he replied. He didn't need to tell himself to not get his hopes up; he had just spent the last forty-five minutes resigning himself to inaction.  
  
She continued. "You tried to negate the data stream during the forging, right? But it threw off your GD and released a shock wave." He was nodding, even though she couldn't see him. "Well, maybe your digivice has some residual data that could tell us something about what happened."  
  
He responded simply. "Probably, but I don't the means to analyze the data; I'm on another continent, far away from any GD'ed systems."  
  
"Yes," she affirmed, "But maybe we could relay the data between our digivices."  
  
He paused to think for a brief moment, then shook his head. "It's an interesting thought, but I don't see how it would be possible."  
  
"Well, how are you talking me to me?" she replied.  
  
"Wait, you're saying you want to use the phone system? There's no way it could support that. Maybe over cell phones--after all, they use an actual networking and communications protocol--but digivices are too complex. Computers are binary, base two, but digivices are any number of bases, real and non-real. You're the math whiz, you would know."  
  
He sensed her, and felt as though she was making this up as she went along She spoke. "If you focused on delimiting the bases.... like a filter...."  
  
She didn't have to finish; he was already ahead of her. "You know, that just might work. But the converted data would be immense. How could we hope to send it all over the telephone? And don't you think someone at the local telephone service provider might notice something?"  
  
He felt her shrug. "We have time, don't we? And I'll give Rod a call, ask him to sabotage the call monitoring systems, make sure no one picks up on it. You know he's good at that kind of thing," she added.  
  
Evan was nodding unconsciously in comprehension. "Hm.... that just might work. Why don't we give it a try right now?"  
  
He materialized his GD and felt her materialize hers. "One moment," he said as he set the phone down on the floor of the hotel room. He rooted through his backpack until he came across the familiar wires, and hooked his ghost digivice up to the phone line. He picked it back up.  
  
"You ready?" he said into the receiver.  
  
"Of course," she answered.  
  
He probed his digivice and found a few unrecognizable data segments which he identified as the residue of the earlier digital reaction in the library.  
  
Then, he focused on designing a filter to transfer that data through the phone and relay it to Amelia's GD.  
  
A few minutes later, his focus had deepened considerably, and his eyes had fallen closed in the process. He blinked, and noticed that the data was transferring successfully.  
  
"It's working," he said into the phone, with an involuntary smile.  



	8. School Day

Chapter Eight  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
Evan couldn't sleep. He supposed it was insomnia; he'd endured it more in recent weeks. He would attempt to still his thoughts and force sleep upon his mind, but he would soon drift in his course. Eventually the alarm rang, and he sat up and out of his queen-sized bed.  
  
He had a while before the school began, and he needed to prepare. He meticulously clothed himself in the school uniform before proceeding to pack his bookbag for his first day at Siojaton High.  
  
As he set various writing utensils in the front pouch of the backpack, his actions brought back memories of high school.  
  
He'd been petitioned, received his GD and initial powers back in the seventh grade, and in the following five years through high school, he had made himself an outcast through his perceived strangeness and aversion to social contact.  
  
Now he was nineteen, and passing himself off as a seventeen-year-old junior to find the other kids in Siojaton who would be petitioned. It was fortunate that the local elementary/middle school and high school had been built relatively close together; he could keep an eye out for anything unusual among the high-schoolers while scanning the area for any potentials like Ienji.  
  
No, not like Ienji, he thought. I'll get to them first. I can't allow any more mistakes. Ienji's premature link-forging must have been a miscalculation, but now I'm not going to take any chances. Anywhere.  
  
He finished packing the last of his things; along with the basic school supplies, he had left his wires and other miscellaneous 'work' items, in case it became necessary. With these things in his thoughts, he donned his grey jacket and headed out the door.  
  
_--Ienji--_  
  
When Ienji woke up, the events of the previous day passed through his mind.  
  
Crashing his bicycle into the other's bicycle, finishing his ride to the local library in his job as a page, feeling the strange connection take place and watching in a haze as he found himself able to subconsciously materialized the digital device--and then, after a moment or a millenium of this 'petitioning', the encounter with that same rider in the library.... in his mind he once more felt the force of the two digital devices as he had been thrown against the wall, along with the rider.... the strange after-feeling, the awkward introduction, the phone call the rider, Evan, had made.... and the conversation, where Ienji had been told of his status as a 'chosen child' and the existence of these two worlds, the digital world and the real world.... the after-feeling that had continued through the night, as the rain had fallen....  
  
He sat up instinctively, still half-asleep, and the reached to flip off his alarm. It was a morning ritual every Siojaton High student was familiar with. As he made his bed and began to dress, he pondered yesterday's happenings analytically. Was it possible it had all been a dream? The idea of two worlds and some sort of metaphysical activity was against everything he'd been taught to believe could be possible, but somehow, he knew it was real. It felt real.  
  
He paused, half-dressed, and attempted to materialized the ghost digital device, like he remembered practicing several times the previous night. He focused his thoughts, and immediately the contraption appeared on the palm of his hand, transparent and luminescent.  
  
Ienji blinked, and held the focus in the back of his mind as he examined the strange device. It had shown itself more easily than in his previous attempts, and the materialization had felt more natural--more comfortable, even.  
  
He released his focus on the digital device; it disappeared, and he resumed his school preparations.  
  
Ten minutes later, he was out of his bedroom and into the living room/kitchen area, where he poured himself a light bowl of breakfast cereal. He noticed that the door to his mother's room was ajar; she must have come home late last night, or early this morning.  
  
Ienji made his way out the door, backpack slung over his shoulder, a few minutes before eight o'clock.  



	9. The Bus

Chapter Nine  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
Evan took the stairs and left the hotel through the side door, so the receptionist wouldn't see him--if she recognized him from the previous day as the young man who had identified himself as a nineteen and unemployed, and then spotted him on the school bus to Siojaton High, she would no doubt be suspicious.  
  
He wanted to minimize any unnecessary contact with the locals--he never knew where and which identity he'd need to use. Now that he'd be entering the Siojaton High student community as a junior, he would need to keep his school life and the rest of his activities very separate.  
  
An early departure allowed him to walk to the bus stop at his leisure--the bus was scheduled to pass by in ten minutes. He had studied the map through the evening of the previous day, and was confident in his ability to navigate the area.  
  
Evan's wristwatch told him that he still had three minutes when he finally arrived at the bus stop. Another student was there; a young girl, likely a freshman. He stood a few feet from her, along the sidewalk.  
  
They stood in silence for a minute or so before he entertained a greeting. After all, he might as well take the opportunity to get to know a fellow student.  
  
"Hello," he said. "My name's Evan; I'm new to the city."  
  
Her head turned to him as he said this, and she nodded, bowed shortly, before voicing a brief response. "Welcome." She then resumed her silence.  
  
Evan frowned. She didn't seem particularly social; he decided to follow her example and simply look steadily at nothing in silence.  
  
No sooner had he proceed to do so, than the bus turned around the corner at the top of the street. He shifted slightly as it edged its way down to the corner before coming to a full stop, the folding panel swinging open routinely.  
  
The girl immediately strode over and hopped up the step of the bus, and he followed two steps behind her.  
  
_--Ienji--_  
  
Fifteen minutes's bike-ride distance away, along the border of the south side, another school bus picked up Ienji.  
  
He was a fairly well-liked kid at school--not one of the most popular in the entire eleventh grade, of course, but he had friends in every social circle. He did have a few friends who were closer to him than the rest, but most times he would get along with most everyone.  
  
Ienji took a seat fairly near the back, next to a sophomore named Jared, who scooted in to accomodate the new arrival; they were fairly close friends.  
  
"Eh, Ien," he said, "I tried to reach you several times last night; where were you?"  
  
Ienji started; he suddenly recalled hearing the phone ring several times the night before, but through the strange haze he hadn't seen fit to respond.  
  
"Oh, I was.... out," he supplied. "There were some things I had to do.... yes." He glanced at the other's face to see if the explanation had held or not.  
  
He was greeted by a good-natured quip. "What, you had to hide the body?" Jared laughed. "It's fine. There were just a few odd things I wanted to discuss with you, but I'm all right. Maybe later."  
  
For a few seconds, there was a sudden awkwardness that came out of nowhere. They sat in silence for a moment before Ienji replied. "Did you get a haircut or something? You seem different."  
  
Jared shook his head, and grinned. "No; maybe you just noticed that I took the time to straighten it out this morning." He was lean, with messy dark hair, and a slight quality to his face, almost European.  
  
But Ienji had thought that there was more to it than that; he shook his head absentmindedly. "It wasn't that; hmm. Never mind. What classes do we have today? I don't know if I packed the appropriate materials."  
  
As one of the most academically gifted students in the school, Jared was always very 'together', and scheduled his time for maximum efficiency, despite seeming (for all appearances) a misfit.  
  
"There's history classes--you have world history, I have Japanese history--followed by our chemistry class, free period, algebra, and lastly writing class," he recited from memory. "I would call it a standard day."  
  
Ienji considered this for a moment. "I'm set, then," he determined. He added, "I don't know how you can manage all of this, on the morning after the weekend."  
  
Jared shrugged; this was not an uncommon discussed subject. "It is no problem." As he said this, the bus pulled up in front of the school, the panel swung open once again, and kids began filing out.  
  
The two sat up in unison and made their way up to the front of the bus, and then out onto the parking lot, through the double-doors and into the hall of the school.  



	10. The New Kid

Chapter Ten  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
Evan allowed the willowy old woman--his guidance counselor? He wasn't certain--to lead him through the long halls of the school, each lined with rows of lockers.  
  
He felt very self-conscious; he was dressed in his usual khaki pants, as was in order with the dress code, and a long-sleeved 'dress shirt' with the school logo imprinted upon the collar of the right sleeve; his attire was fairly loose-fitting.  
  
After passing through several turns--the school felt a maze to him, and it was significantly larger than the high school he'd experienced back in America--the woman leading him stopped abruptly.  
  
"Here is your classroom," she informed him curteously. He bowed and thanked her as she received his gratitude and promptly exited back down the hallway.  
  
Before opening the door, he took the time to re-examine his two posessions, besides his bookbag and worn clothes; an excusal notice on behalf of his lateness, and a form schedule, with his classes written upon it.  
  
If he read his schedule correctly, this would be first period world history class. He gently opened the door, allowing the movement to forecast his entry; he heard the teacher's voice quiet through the doorway.  
  
As the door lightly swung open, he took in the sight of the classroom. The desks were rowed, around two dozen in all, with students occupying most of the seat, excepting a few empty seats in the last row.  
  
Evan stepped forward and through the door, briefly looking over the class and returning a few curious glances before focusing his gaze upon the teacher, a middle-aged man with a flat face and round-rimmed glasses.  
  
He walked over to the teacher and presented his notice, which the teacher read duly before curtly telling Evan, "You may be seated." Evan thanked the man.  
  
As he walked along the side of the classroom to the back row, he recognized a boy in the back row; Ienji. He blinked upon this recognition, but hid his reaction and took the farthest-away empty seat, two spaces away from Ienji's.  
  
The lesson resumed; Evan quietly unzipped his backpack and brought out a notebook, and began to take notes with the rest of the class.  
  
_--Ienji--_  
  
Before the door had opened, Ienji had somehow known the arrival to be Evan. It came as a great surprise to him when he saw that the other wore a student uniform, and then took a seat in the same classroom; for some reason, Ienji had assumed that Evan was past the status of student.  
  
Apparently not. The two were sitting in the same classroom, a class only for sophomores and juniors in high school.  
  
Of course, Ienji's hand was still occupied, taking notes as the teacher dictated. But his mind had traveled back to the events of the previous day.  
  
Who was this kid, Evan? He said he'd come here to help guide Ienji--how could he do that if he was a minor? Was he an exchange student? American, certainly.  
  
All these strange changes, twists, were.... intriguing. Evan had needed to leave abruptly yesterday afternoon, leaving many questions unanswered.... perhaps today, he would have a chance to answer such questions.  
  
Refocusing his mind, Ienji once again attempted to concentrate on the subject matter, the Byzantine economy. He didn't succeed very well.  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
The lesson went by slowly as Evan furiously jotted down the teacher's notes on the Byzantine way of life; either this teacher was an especially difficult one, or Siojaton City held a much higher standard than his old high school.  
  
As he wrote page after page of outlined phrases, he found himself recalling the habits of high school life; notably, the ability to take notes effectively while allowing the mind to wander.  
  
Time passed, and his eyes slowly and steadily scanned his environment. It was a medium-sized classroom, not particularly decorated. He sensed that most of the kids didn't feel oppressed, but there was quite a bit of unvoiced emotion, subconscious tensions--he was good at sensing such things.  
  
All of a sudden, he noticed what should have been blindingly obvious; he'd let his own experience in multicultural America influence his observation. This was a prominent city in eastern Japan, yet only a quarter of the students appeared of Asian heritage; there were more students with caucasian, hispanic, black, and other such characteristics, than Evan would have believed reasonable.  
  
He momentarily broke off from his note-taking at this realization, before remembering himself and writing faster to catch up. He would have to inquire about this statistical improbability at a later, more convenient time.  
  
_--Ienji--_  
  
Ienji started at the sound of the bell; he'd drifted off for a while there. An entire period of taking notes often had that effect upon him (and a few other kids in the same class, he'd noticed).  
  
Every student sat up as one from their desks as one, beforing threading through and out into the hallway. Ienji lagged behind--as did Evan, he noticed.  
  
The hallway swarmed with students; there was only a two-minute interval between classes, and the late were often penalized. Ienji regretfully glanced at Evan one last time as he turned right down the hall in the direction of the science wing, hoping to himself that they'd have a chance to talk later.  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
Meanwhile, Evan did not notice Ienji's meaningful glance; his eyes were quickly glancing at his schedule in an attempt to figure out what, and where, his next class would be. He sensed an overall hurried, worried feeling among students, and hoped to himself that there was no consequence for lateness.  
  
"Let's see...." he muttered to himself, "Where's the math wing....?"  
  
"You're heading to the math wing?" asked a smooth voice from over his shoulder. "You're new here, I see, so follow me."  
  
Surprised, Evan turned his head, and found himself facing a well-dressed brunette, who was already trotting off down the hall at an energetic pace, and motioned for him to follow. Responding immediately, he half-walked, half-ran to catch up to the girl.  
  
Two minutes later, he was still a half-paced behind her when they both stepped into a classroom a half-second before the bell rang. As she went to take a seat in the second row, she suddenly stopped, turning to face him.  
  
"My name's Andrea," she informed him cordially. "What's yours?"  
  
He blinked once before answering. "Uh, it's Evan, thanks. Am I in the right classroom....?"  
  
"You are if it's trigonometry," she replied matter-of-factly as she took her seat. As he moved to find a desk for himself, she continued, "Welcome to Siojaton High."  
  
As he took the seat near the back, it suddenly occurred to him that they had been speaking in English.  
  



	11. Miguel

Chapter Eleven  
  
_--Ienji--_  
  
On the other side of the school, Ienji had missed the bell by a short moment--fortunately, the teacher was absent. The students sat and talked in low voices; a few minutes later, their instructor strode through the doorway, appearing a bit flustered.  
  
"Hello, class," he greeted the students formally, as he set his materials upon the desk and adjusted his shirt collar. "Today...." he trailed off before continuing, "we will begin a brief unit on energy."  
  
He cleared his throat before continuing. "For now, you will take notes. If there is any time left at the end of class, you may address any questions to me concering the subject matter."  
  
True to his word, for the next forty-five minutes, the students sat and took notes. Of course, many kids would pass personal notes, or forward pictures of hand-written notes on their cell phones--text messaging had become apparent. Note-taking, and a system of weekly segmented teaching units, was a common teaching style among the faculty of SHS, Siojaton High School.  
  
Ienji had begun to fully waken--it always took him a class or two--and was more able to focus his attention on what was taught, instead of the events of the previous day, which were of course much more interesting.  
  
Although concentration was growing more and more difficult.... he was beginning to sense strange things; what he believed were the feelings of the thoughts of others. Yesterday afternoon, Evan had told him that this was to be expected; that didn't make it any easier to adapt to these sensations.  
  
"So, energy exists in one of two states: kinetic or potential. Potential energy is the type of energy that is stored, often after a force has taken place," the teacher summarized. "Kinetic energy is the driving energy; it is the non-material component that allows the universe to exist as it is today."  
  
With these words, the instructor set his pen down before checking the clock. Seeing that there were still five minutes to the bell, he turned back to his students and asked, "Are there any questions?"  
  
A kid sitting in the row ahead and off to the left raised his hand. Ienji recalled the kid's name to be Miguel. "If energy exists within a continuum, namely the universe as we know it, then of course, as you have stated, it exists in a finite and immeasurable state; however, if that continuum were to possess associative and disassociative properties in relation to matter and energy, how would a paradox be resolved?"  
  
As this was said, Ienji frowned. He'd rarely heard Miguel speak up before in class, but now he was asking the teacher a question that was clearly out of line with the curriculum--was the kid looking for trouble?  
  
The teacher quickly masked an expression of displeasured surprise. "Mr. Santos, no such properties exist. However, if you wish to ask a physicist in the field, you may feel free to do so after class," the instructor replied.  
  
The response was clearly a dismissal, but for some reason Miguel didn't pick up on it, or perhaps chose not to. "Well, will this section be covering the role of anti-matter? I think it may be relevant."  
  
Inadvertantly displaying his flustered state of mind, the teacher replied, "No, we will not be covering anti-matter. Now, if there are any other questions--"  
  
"I have another question," Miguel interrupted. "What business does Siojaton High have teaching underdeveloped, simplistic curriculum in spite of the intellectual curiosity of its students? Does the school administration consider its students to be unfit for the tru--"  
  
Now it was the instructor's turn to interrupt. "Be silent! You disrespect the authority of this establishment when you speak so insolently. Report to the office, immediately."  
  
Miguel appeared startled, as though wakening from a trance, but he did stand up and walk to the back of the room behind the desks, and then to the exit. He appeared dazed, confuddled. Ienji sensed something strange....  
  
No sooner had he sensed this than the teacher designated him to wash the chalk board for the next class. For the next three minutes, until the end-of-class bell rang, he washed dutifully and mostly forgot what he'd felt.  
  



	12. Free Period

Chapter Twelve  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
As Evan stepped out the door of the trigonometry classroom, he reflected that he was beginning to get the hang of this high school.  
  
His trig teacher had been pretty laid back, but he hadn't had a chance to materialize his GD to begin monitoring any possible potentials in the area. There had been a considerably less amount of note-taking, and a bit more discussion.  
  
The class had been composed entirely of his fellow juniors. He'd had a chance to hear many of them speak; it seemed that although they all knew Japanese fairly well, many spoke with accents. There was a lot of diversity; not just cultural, but emotional and psychological. He could sense it.  
  
The girl, Andrea, was, from what he could tell, half-preppie and half-class clown. A social butterfly, too; he sensed that she was very receptive to the feelings of others.  
  
Evan checked his schedule and found that he apparently had a free block now, along with the rest of his class, and--from what he could tell--half the school.  
  
He followed along with the crowd and hoped they were all going to the same place to spend their free block.  
  
_--Ienji--_  
  
As Ienji passed into the halls and let himself merge with the tide of students heading to the break rooms and student lounge.  
  
This was a familiar scene to him, as students at SHS had collective free blocks three days out of the eight-day rotating class schedule. Kids were given an hour to hang out with their peers; often many would take advantage of the free time to study or complete work for a more difficult class.  
  
Ienji always took the opportunity to simply relax and enjoy time with friends. As he reflected upon this, he spotted Jared and Alec across the hall, and walked over to them.  
  
The three friends found a table in the break room. The low murmer of conversation was present, although on this quiet Monday morning, the mood seemed less bouyant than usual, Ienji could feel.  
  
Siojaton High was located in the south side of the city; the area shared several other high schools, so the 15-to-18-year-old population was divided among several local schools. This year, the high school served about five hundred kids, which was more than previous years.  
  
As the three settled down, flopping their backpacks and bookbags onto the circular table, Ienji looked around. There were at least fifty kids in the area, mostly freshmen and sophomores. The juniors (in general) usually picked the student lounge as their free block hangout, while seniors, of course, went to the senior lounge.  
  
There were exceptions, of course, and there was free passage between all free block areas.  
  
Ienji took out his binder, deciding he might attempt to study for the history quiz later in the week; he hoped that having a focus would help him ignore some of the stranger feelings he was experiencing through this 'empathy'.  
  
Jared and Alec took out a chemistry notebook and a thin silver laptop, respectively. The latter (kid) was rarely seen without it, and had a reputation as a goofball and a computer nerd; a fellow junior with a short stature and and light, close-cut hair, his friends knew of whom they'd be wisest to employ assistance, when it came to technology.  
  
"So, I heard that Miguel Santos really had it in for the chemistry professor today," Alec said, his eyes set on the laptop's flat screen as his fingers flitted across the keyboard faster than anyone else in the school.  
  
"How'd you hear about that so fast?" Ienji frowned. "It happened less than ten minutes ago, and the bell only sounded two minutes past."  
  
Alec removed his gaze from the screen for a moment to lock eyes with Ienji, letting a good-natured smile fill his expression. "The speed of sound is one thousand sixty-two kilometers per hour," he replied.  
  
For some reason, Ienji felt that there was an element of deception in his friend's response, but he let it pass. "Anyway, you heard correctly--he questioned the intelligence of the teacher, the quality of the curriculum, and the motivations of the school administration. He was sent down to the office--oh, here he is now," Ienji finished.  
  
All three turned to the break room door, as Miguel passed through, hands in his pockets. He appeared quite frustrated. They watched as he took a seat at the mostly-empty end of a long table, by himself.  
  
"Looks like he just got back," Jared inputted. Alec nodded agreement.  
  
Ienji was suddenly very alert, as though expectant. His new sense, what he had assumed to be empathy, was feeling something else, something that didn't feel like the product of the human mind.  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
Evan had followed the movement of the juniors from his trigonometry class, and had eventually arrived at what a low sign on the door indicated was the 'student lounge'.  
  
He took a seat on a table already occupied by several preppies, off to the side a seat or so, but not so much that he was disassociated from the crowd. He noticed that in the center of table, and doing most of the talking, was Andrea; in Japanese, not English like before.  
  
"And so when I asked her what had happened, she told me she'd set the clock forward twelve hours because she didn't want to have to subtract twelve to the hour every time," he overheard her relate. Several friends laughed. "And that's why I was late today, to answer your question," she concluded.  
  
Suddenly, she turned and glanced over to the end of the table, at Evan. He froze. "Oh, look, everyone, it's Evan. He's new here, apparently," she informed her friends.  
  
Evan reflected that he'd have to change tactics; now that he'd been identified and brought to attention, he couldn't so easily just sit down anywhere and try to pick up nearby conversation.  
  
"Yes, I'm from the United States. I don't speak this language well," he replied. He hoped that last comment might discourage excessive conversation; he didn't want to stand out, he had a job to do.  
  
"Welcome to Siojaton! Oh, you don't? Well, you'll probably be needing lots of practice, which I'm sure everyone here will be happy to provide in part; and I do love conversation!" She said that last sentence fragment in a comical tone of voice, and then laughed her clear, good-natured laugh.  
  
She continued, "I'm from America, too; I came here when I was nine. You'll fit right in, considering that the city is very multicultural, due to the recent trends in globalization. There's a lot going down around here!" She spoke the last sentence in English, and let out a laugh.  
  
Evan grinned; it was more habit that response, although both in part. This girl was indeed a social butterfly, and he found himself charmed by her benevolent personality.  
  
Still, he had a job to do. Andrea turned back to speak to her friends about some test she'd taken first period, and Evan took the chance to look around the room.  
  
He sat in a seat on a table in a rectangular room, twice as long as it was wide. Mostly juniors, but possibly a few sophomores and seniors, inhabited the recreational space. Two sofas, ten tables of various shapes and sizes, two oft-frequented soda machines, and a few folding chairs littered the area.  
  
There was little to no supervision; it seemed to Evan that the school had the attitude that students should be expected to behave themselves when left to their own devices.  
  
Glancing sideways, he checked to see that no one was looking, and briefly materialized his ghost digivice and slipped it into his bookbag, where he could reach his hand in to manipulate the device without little risk  
of being noticed.  
  
Working quickly and quietly, he set up a detector field, to sense for any potentials, which he would in turn locate and confront in due time. As he configured the visual display, he frowned.  
  
For some reason, his GD wasn't working correctly; had he made a mistake? It should show only two blue dots, himself and Ienji, as the only two in the school to have passed through the forging and have digivices--with a few other red dots to show mere potentials, those who would need his guidance.  
  
But, for some reason, the 3D projection of his ghost digivice showed roughly a dozen blue dots, with zero red dots. Which simply wasn't possible. Unless.... but, no, the early forging time for Ienji had simply been a miscalculation. Right?  
  
He was about to re-evaluate the program on his digivice to find where he'd made the error--whether in display or data recognition--when one of the blue dots suddenly began to pulse.  
  
Evan's jaw dropped. There was no time to make adjustments--this could only mean one thing. Several students glanced up at him in surprise as he raced out the door and down the hall.  
  



	13. Confrontation

Chapter Thirteen  
  
_--Ienji--_  
  
"Ienji?"  
  
He blinked. Someone was calling his name? His eyes focused, and he noticed Jared staring at him, concern plain on his face.  
  
"Ienji? You there?" Jared waved his hand an inch from Ienji's face; he responded by batting the offending hand aside. "Where else would I be?" he replied, giving Jared a no-nonsense expression.  
  
Jared shrugged. "Well, you kind of zoned off on us for a minute there. I was just saying, there's definitely something different about you today. Did you do anything to yourself?"  
  
Ienji shook his head. "Nope, I didn't get anything done. That is, I didn't do anything. I mean, no one did anything to me. I'm the same," he fumbled.  
  
Alec took the time to look up from his laptop for the sole purpose of giving him a quizzical look that clearly and silently stated, "What's wrong with you?"  
  
Ienji was about to give his friends a wry response, when the room shook.  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
Evan tripped and fell as the hall floor jolted slightly in response to a distant quake. The indicator on his GD began to blink faster.  
  
All the way, he focused harder than he'd ever before, utilizing a difficult data stream that had rarely ever been necessary, and never as necessary as it was now.  
  
Beams of light shot out from the ghost digivice and enveloped his body at various distinguishing reason. An old woman passing by fell over in surprise at the sight of him as he rushing past.  
  
_--Ienji--_  
  
Several tables shook; he heard several yells of surprise. It was only a brief quake, but severe, and many lost their balance.  
  
Ienji, Jared, and Alec immediately took to the floor. Ienji noticed the latter swiping his laptop off the table and onto the floor, typing more furiously than ever.  
  
Turning around, his immediately focused on the odd sight; at the center of the room, with a three-meter radius of space around him, was a kid. He wore a jet-black cloak, and held his right arm up in the air, with what Ienji knew to be a digital device clenched in his glowing fist. Ienji recognized him, but couldn't place the name.  
  
"Now that I have your undivided attention...." the kid began, "I would like to make a few things clear. Oh, I've locked the door." A few kids had run toward the lone exit, but even as he said this, they shook the handle, and it would not turn. Now all eyes were on the solitary figure.  
  
"I don't need anyone anymore. I can handle anything. I have great power, and will use it for what I wish." Ienji suddenly placed the kid's name; Anish. He was a freshman.  
  
A few young men started toward him belligerently after hearing all of this, apparently attempting to seize him and demand that he let them out of the room. Before they get close, Anish laughed, and suddenly the room once more shook violently, and a circular fissure opened up around him; the floor crumbled and the cut in the floor grew to over a meter in width. Students leapt back to avoid falling into the crevice.  
  
"Feel free to set yourselves apart from the others, so that I may be better able to choose which will die first," he informed his fellow students. They froze and shifted uncomfortably.  
  
For a moment, no one made a sound, as Anish eyed them predatorily. Ienji's mind raced, but the fear held him still along with the forty other kids.  
  
Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, Miguel Santos lunged across the fissure at Anish, swinging his backpack like a club.  
  
Calling out in surprise, Anish sidestepped while striking into the air with the palm of his left hand; Miguel was flung aside in mid-jump, and barely managed to take hold of the edge of the fissure with one hand, avoiding a fall to certain death. His backpack fell into the fathomless depths.  
  
As Anish took a step forward, presumably to finish the job, the door to the student lounge crashed open.  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
By now fully disguised, Evan tried to the handle, but it didn't work, so he was took a few steps back before racing forward and placing a well-aimed kick directly below the knob of the door.  
  
The hinge ripped off the wall as the locked flew open and crashed to the floor. Evan stepped up into the room, defensive data streams at the ready, and scanned the scene visually.  
  
Thirty or forty kids in all, mostly attempting to hide behind desks or along the walls of the room; notably, a circular depression, the center of which there was a kid with Indian features, who was approaching another kid, who was hanging from the edge of the unnatural fissure.  
  
Evan wasted no time in striking out; he sent a wave of digital energy through the air. The wave struck the Indian kid and slammed him against the vending machine on the far side of the room, tearing his cloak down the middle.  
  
Clearly outmatched, the cloaked kid eyed Evan with cold hatred. "You will see me again," he stated with a dark fury in his tone. Immediately, he raised his digivice into the air; Evan recognized the maneuver but didn't react quick enough.  
  
A flash of light, and a burst of sound, enveloped the area and momentary blinded everyone. Evan quickly focused on defensive structures, because he could do nothing else.  
  
Twenty seconds passed, and his sight began to return to him. He examined his digivice, and saw that the blinking indicator had left the building and was heading away from the school.  
  
Without a moment's pause, Evan was out the door and in pursuit.  
  



	14. Pursuit, Fight

Chapter Fourteen  
  
_--Ienji--_  
  
Ienji, along with forty or fifty other kids, staggered as their sight returned after the temporary blindness caused by the flash.  
  
It took him a second to realize that at some point, the ringing in his ears had been replaced by a different kind of ringing; someone must have pulled the fire alarm.  
  
He removed his hand from the table he'd been steadying himself on. Jared seemed in a similar condition, although there was a strange look in his eyes.... Alec, unsurprisingly, was typing quickly with one hand while rest the other upon his forehead; he appeared a bit addled, but was doing something.  
  
Most of the kids were fleeing the room, now that the door had been opened and the danger appeared past. Alec wasn't fleeing, and was instead concentrating on hooking up to his laptop he'd removed from his backpack. Ienji himself didn't want to leave without his friends, and Jared appeared uncertain.  
  
In the aftermath of all that had occurred in less than two minutes, no one but the three of them noticed Alec point the lens of a digital camera around the scene, apparently taking dozens of pictures of the devastation.  
  
Suddenly, Ienji felt something strong, like a wind, but going down.... it was hard to put it into words.  
  
He instinctively materialized his own digital device for a brief moment before noticing himself and dematerializing it; he looked around, but no one appeared to have seen him. There were only a dozen kids still there, and, all but these three were heading out the door as quickly as possible.  
  
The 'wind' picked up, and with warning the student lounge shook once more; but this time, it was the opposite of all previous. The room righted itself, having titled a few degrees in the initial quake, and the circular fissure narrowed before sealing itself; as if by magic, the cracks in the tiled floor disappeared. It was as if nothing at all had happened.  
  
Still none of them spoke. Then, finally, Jared said, "I think we should leave now." Ienji and Alec--who had packed his computer equipment--nodded.  
  
The three friends shakily out through the empty doorway, stepping over the crashed-in door on their way out.  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
Evan found himself wishing he'd taken his bike instead of the bus; his legs  
were beginning to tire, but he didn't let up his pursuit in the slightest.  
  
The kid seemed to have somehow passed through the forging of the link between  
himself and the digital world without harm; just like Ienji.... this kid  
had taken it upon himself to terrorize his fellow students using a power  
of which he couldn't possibly have any real understanding.  
  
He was misguided; Evan hadn't been there to explain things. Why was this all  
this happening? Where had they gone wrong?  
  
Now the digivice was telling him the kid was forty yards ahead of him. He  
looked forwarded and spotted a cloaked figure stepping down into the subway  
station; the same one at which Evan had arrived in Siojaton.  
  
Evan picked up the pace; he'd end it there.  
  
_--Ienji--_  
  
As Ienji, Jared and Alec left through the double-doors into the space outside the school, they spotted police and firemen rushing down into the student lounge.  
  
The schoolmaster, along with the entire faculty and all students, were outside; he was on a cell phone, apparently arguing with someone.  
  
Most of the kids were huddled in groups, and discussing what had occurred in tearful, excited, frightened, or hysterical whispers. Ienji and his two friends remained silent for some time.  
  
Finally, one of the three worked up the nerve to speak of the events. "What happened?" Jared said quietly. "It was just a regular day.... and then that kid, Anish.... how did he do those things?" He paused, then asked, "Did all of you see what I saw?"  
  
Alec nodded. "Yes. And I even have photographic proof; I took a few pictures before the floor closed up like nothing had happened."  
  
"That's good," Jared replied absently. "I just wish you'd taken a photo of that strange glowing device.... I felt it.... that is, I've never seen anything like it before."  
  
"I have," Ienji said out of nowhere.  
  
Both friends looked at him in surprise. "What do you mean?" Alec asked.  
  
Ienji almost faltered, but spoke readily. "I've seen something like that before.... it happened yesterday," he told them. He turned to Jared before continuing. "I was going to tell you on the bus, Jared, but.... I felt that maybe I shouldn't."  
  
He sighed heavily before looking each of his friends in the eye as he went on. "I think we should discuss this somewhere else.... 2:00 p.m., the library?" he queried.  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
Evan took two steps at a time as he descend into the underground station. He held his GD in front of him; its light seemed to clear a path.  
  
He leapt over the turnstiles and glanced around. It was the time of the day in which the station was often empty. There were two landings, inbound and outbound; he assumed the kid would be at the outbound.  
  
Sure enough, there he was; conspicuous in his torn cloak and the glowing object he held in his right fist. The kid glanced around in alert paranoia, and spotted Evan coming toward him.  
  
Knowing he had to move quickly--this kid was no match for Evan's skill and experience, but he did have a few tricks, like the blinder-deafener.  
  
Evan threw out a digital 'net', to bind him, but the kid dodged it. Cursing, he threw another net, but the kid slammed forth his digivice and dissolve the net before it could make contact.  
  
He and the kid were the only two people in sight, so Evan held nothing back. He took a step forward and prepared to fire another net, but suddenly saw the kid hold his GD up in the air; Evan quickly closed his eyes to avoid the blinder, and the earplugs he'd put on nullified the deafener.  
  
Appearing frustrated, the kid decided to take the fight up a notch. He thrust his hand at the ground, and suddenly the ground shook violently. Evan caught himself as he fell.  
  
He looked up, and noticed a bit of dust and rubble crumbling off the ceiling. "By all means bring the subway crashing on us," he yelled at the kid.  
  
The kid twitch his left hand in an attempt to apply telekinetic force, but he easily deflected it with a touch of his own telekinesis. Evan then fired one last net directly at him.  
  
Out of nowhere, the kid cried out. It wasn't a cry of anger, or of sadness, or as the result of pain; it was almost as though the kid was cursing all things that had rightness.  
  
Time slowed, and Evan felt something he'd never felt before.  
  
Massive streams of digital energy, focusing and condense upon the solitary cloaked figure. It was like the formulation of a more powerful processer.  
  
Speechless, he stared in awe as darkness--physical darkness--gathered around the kid, and.... transformed him.  
  
The indicator on Evan's ghost digivice--previously a blinking blue dot, it had become a vast dark hole in the 3D holographic projection.  
  
The kid, now only a shadowy form, easily batted aside the digital net, before advance upon Evan threateningly.  
  
Instinctively, Evan reconciled his confusion and uncertainty by focusing on the reinforcement of a digital 'shield'. It probably saved his life, because a half-second later, a massive wave of telekinetic force impacted him, and he flew against the far wall of the station at around 150 kph.  
  
His shields cushioned him, and now he realized that his only hope was to focus on shields. The shadowed figure pummmeled him with attack after attack, and it was all Evan could do to stave his attacks, wear him out.  
  
For a minute Evan began to believe that the kid wouldn't even get tired, but then he observed that the frequency of assault became lower.  
  
Evan thought he might pass out from the sheer effort of it, but then, as if in farewell to a nightmare, the darkness evaporated, and the kid became a kid again.  
  
Both of them suddenly heard the sound of an approaching outbound train. It settled to a stop just as the darkness fully faded.  
  
Feeling a second wind come over him, Evan dropped his focus on defense and began to fling net after net at the kid, who narrowly dodged or deflected each one.  
  
Evan saw that the kid wanted to catch a ride out of town on the train, and moved to cut him off. But he wasn't quite fast enough to fully anticipate the kid's sudden blinder, and his eyes only closed partially as the flash distorted his vision.  
  
For a moment he couldn't see what he was doing, and those few seconds cost him; the next thing he knew, the kid was stepping onto the near-empty train.  
  
Desperate, Evan raced toward the train as he flung one last net, but the doors were closing at it bounced off harmlessly.  
  
He ran forward, pounding at the doors, yelling for the conductor to open them, but there was no response. He watched helplessly as the train moved out.  
  
The last thing Evan saw before he passed out from exhaustion was the word 'Tokyo' labeled on the back of the train.  
  



	15. And Nothing More

Chapter Fifteen  
  
_--Ienji--_  
  
An hour later, the buses arrived and the students of SHS were returned home. Ienji, Jared and Alec had agreed to meet later that day at the library. The latter waved farewell as he departed on a bus separate from Ienji and Jared.  
  
Discussion had continued onto the bus. The two of them were silent, but Ienji overheard a discussion in the seat adjacent to theirs, in Japanese.  
  
"I still can't believe that was Anish Kumar," one girl said. Ienji knew she was a freshman, but didn't know her name. "Didn't he come over from India first term with his little brother? He was so quiet. He always sat in back."  
  
"I wonder if they've caught him yet," a second girl wondered. "Maybe they'll give him a life sentence. I hope so."  
  
"Me too. What a freak," said a girl sitting behind theirs. "Weird stuff. I don't know how he pulled it off, but--"  
  
"Could you guys just give it a rest? I'm certain the police will clear this up. That couldn't have been Anish," a fourth voice, a girl, cut in.  
  
"What do you mean, it couldn't have been him? I was there when it happened, it was definitely him," the second girl responded. "Yushi, if you'd been there, you would've recognized him. He was in your biology class, right?"  
  
Ienji focused in on another conversation, happening in the seat directly in front of him, between two seniors.  
  
"How many times do I have to tell you? There are no such things as aliens," the first kid stiffly informed the second one.  
  
"Then how do you explain today's phenomena, Justin? There's no way that conventional science could explain a connection between a glowing object and earthquakes, and no human technology could create circular fissures," replied the second kid, in a British accent.  
  
"Honestly, Mitch, you are the living end. You will feel very silly when the school committee is able to provide a perfectly logical--'  
  
The second kid, Mitch, cut in. "Of course, they always do. It's the key ingredient of a cover-up; people want answers, so they can sleep soundly each night, and the higher-ups are always more than happy to satisfy that need."  
  
At this point, Jared's stop came, so Ienji scooted over so he could get out. "Four o'clock, right?" he asked as he walked up the aisle to the front of the bus.  
  
"Yeah," Ienji called back as his friend stepped off the bus.  
  
He set his backpack on the empty part of the seat, now that there was space, and attempted to again listen to conversation, but there was a distraction.  
  
He'd felt sensations like this earlier today and yesterday; it was connected to this 'empathy' and the 'digital device' and these strange happenings.  
  
But he couldn't place it, so he attempted to ignore it as he trained his ears to another nearby conversation between two juniors.  
  
"I wonder who was that man who broke open the door? Was he working with the Anish kid?" one asked the other.  
  
"No, he used his own glowing thing to hit Anish, remember? Anish flew against the wall, and then before everyone was blinded, he told the man that he'd see him again. As if they didn't like each other," the other replied.  
  
"Oh, I guess you're right," the first said.  
  
Ienji's 'empathy'--his ability to feel the minds of others--was definitely providing for a lot of emotion. But, it was fading, he could tell. People were calming down, rationalizing things, making explanations.  
  
People's minds tend toward resolution, Ienji realized.  
  
However, he still couldn't get the sensation out of his mind, and so he remained disconcerted until the bus finally dropped him off in front of the apartment building.  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
In the darkness of disconnection, and the pit of unconsciousness, he felt nothing for some time. He couldn't say for how long, or that it was long at all--for all he knew, it could have been a brief moment flickering past.  
  
Then he felt something 'nudging' him--something worried about him. It felt like a very close friend. And so sooner that he'd liked, Evan return to wakefulness.  
  
He groaned and blinked. He felt like so much shit. His eyes focused and he found himself in a train station. Memories of his digital fight with the Indian kid returned to him at once; he checked his watched instinctively.  
  
Twenty minutes had passed? So he'd been unconscious for a relatively short time; it certainly felt short. "No rest for me," he muttered.  
  
Evan stood himself up haphazardly, then shook of his unsteadiness. He took in his surroundings, materialized and dematerialized his GD to make sure there was no permanent damage to any part of him.  
  
Still no one in the station, and he preferred to keep it that way; he knew there'd be cops swarming the place in no time, likely maintaining some sort of perimeter or whatever; something like that.  
  
He suddenly realized that his disguise, one of a man in his thirties with a full beard and black down-combed hair, had disappeared; his unconsciousness had let it up, apparently. No focusing on digital energies when you're out cold.  
  
He trudged up and out of the train station, and then back to the hotel.  
  



	16. Library Meeting

Chapter Sixteen  
  
_--Ienji--_  
  
Ienji checked his watch. It was five minutes to five; he took the time to reflected on the events of the past few days.  
  
It was as if he had been flung into a bizarre dream. Sunday afternoon at the library he'd focused on a feeling and in doing so, accidentally brought about some strange 'natural' event for which he had been chosen; an event which connected him to remnants of a long-lost digital world.  
  
Evan had been very considerate in his explanation, although Ienji knew that he wasn't telling everything. For the rest of the day he'd experimenting with the materialization and dematerialization of his new 'digital device', and had remained in a surrealistic haze through the thunderstorm and into sleep.  
  
And then Ienji had woken up the next morning, and now he was beginning to look at things more clearly, and marvel at how quickly this had all progressed. This unusual ability to sense the minds of others, and a digital divice all his own which clearly had several unique 'manipulations'.... and Evan's promise to help and guide Ienji through all of this.  
  
Not to mention Evan's assertion that there would be others in Siojaton City who would receive the same abilities as he. Cleary Anish, the kid who had taken the junior lounge hostage for a few brief minutes, was one of these. But why hadn't Evan known about it, and come to help? Instead a strange man had broken down the door and scared off Anish, before disappearing himself.  
  
Ienji clearly couldn't trust Evan as much as he'd like to, but he knew his friends well, and would relate all of this to them.  
  
No sooner had he thought all of these things than he sensed Alec's presence in the reference section; three seconds later, Alec stepped into the study room.  
  
"Glad you could make it," Ienji greeted him.  
  
"I wouldn't miss this," Alec replied, as he set his laptop on the tabletop and released the catch to pop it open. "Everyone's talking about what happened, and I'd be interested to hear what your exclusive on this is," he said.  
  
Ienji frowned. "It's not an exclusive, it's just.... something that happened. It was just yesterday, and I haven't had a chance to tell any of you yet. It's complicated. Which was why I asked you guys to come."  
  
Alec nodded. "That's interesting. At the moment, the police aren't getting very far in their investigation--they have only had seven or eight hours to investigate, of course. One part of their difficulties is probably the fact that the fissures closed up and the floor sealed, so any evidence was erased; I have some photos of the open fissures, which I'm thinking of sending to the police, unless what you say indicates that I should do otherwise."  
  
As he said this, Ienji sensed a very hurried person heading in their direction; only when this person was directly outside the door to the study room was he able to identify him as Jared, who entered the room clearly out of breath.  
  
"Hey, guys. I'm here," Jared greeted them, as he slid his backpack off his shoulders and onto the table similarly to the way in which he slid himself into the seat of the table. "I apologize for any lateness."  
  
"What do you mean, lateness?" Alec replied. "You're here a minute or so early." Frowning, Jared checked his watch. "That's strange, my watch is off," he said.  
  
Ienji took a seat at the table with his two friends. "Hmm. Okay," he began. "I guess I'd better get started explaining. I'm not quite sure of all this myself; it's very complicated, but it happened."  
  
Then Ienji proceeded to detail the events of Sunday, and how he'd gone into a trance at the library and the kid had ran in and they'd both hit the wall, and then how the kid introduced himself as Evan and gone over to Ienji's apartment and called someone and subsequently explained things to Ienji.  
  
Then he talked about his new abilities and the way he'd felt all through Sunday, and then waking up and remembering everything, and then getting on the bus with Jared but hesitating before saying anything; Ienji apologized, but explained that he still wasn't thinking right then.  
  
Then he explained how first period world history, the kid Evan had walked in with school attire, and then how he'd felt strange in the junior lounge the moment before Anish had presented himself, and then how he'd watched along with the rest of them.  
  
Finally, he finished. Alec and Jared had listened intently, although Alec was leaning back in his chair as if he were lazing about with one half of his mind and using the other to listen, and Jared had his elbows and the table and was holding his face in his hands, and seemed to be staring blankly.  
  
Alec spoke first. "Wow. I'd say you were lying but it would be so uncharacteristic of you to lie about something like this, that when weighed against all of known science with Occam's Razor, it still wouldn't prevent me from believing you."  
  
Jared's eyes suddenly focused, and he asked, "Can you still do that? Make the digital device appear in your hands? Like Anish's and the man's?"  
  
"Sure," Ienji replied. He'd been expecting someone to say this; it was, after all, the one proof he could provide that verified the truth of his words. He lifted his hand over the table and focused.  
  
His two friends both started involuntarily as a translucent device shimmered into the air before them, and a three-dimensional holographical monitor popped up as well; it displayed the complex interactions of several geometric figures.  
  
Ienji almost twitched as well; he'd never seen this before. Was it symbolic, or did it serve a purpose?  
  
"Anyway," he said, "Now you know it exists...."  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
Evan made his way back to the hotel; he had briefly considered turning back to the school to avoid suspicion, but it had seemed likely that they'd dismiss the kids anyway after an event like that, and his sighting of a yellow bus showed that to be true.  
  
All the while he was cursing under his breath, and wondering how this had all happened so quickly. Everything was going wrong. He'd assumed--they'd all assumed--that Ienji was simply a miscalculation. But apparently every one of their miscalculations was incorrect, but it appeared that dozens of kids had already passed through the connection process.  
  
And without harm, either. Although Evan had refrained from informing Ienji, the fact was that without intervention and guidance, the connection process resulted in catastrophe every time.  
  
They all knew--and felt--that the energies just couldn't work, just couldn't make things the way they should be. With the digital world destroyed, and only scattered remnants in existence, destiny had broken.  
  
He said those last three words aloud, under his breath, and then he realized that for the first time in four years, he'd said the word 'destiny' aloud.  
  
Evan would call Amelia--that would have priority. And then they could make a decision on his next course of action, which he assumed would be to prevent events from progressing any farther astray than they already had.  
  
_--Ienji--_  
  
After holding the digital device on his palm for several seconds, Ienji decided to dematerialize it; he closed the palm of his hand, and the light disappeared.  
  
"Do you think you could hold open a little longer?"  
  
Ienji glanced at Jared, who had asked this; his friend appeared lost in concentration. Nodding in acquiescence, Ienji rematerialized the device.  
  
Alec was typing lightly upon his laptop, although for once, most of his attention seemed focused on the glowing device, something other than the screen.  
  
"When I look at it, I get a feeling.... like..." Jared trailed off for a moment before continuing, "....like this."  
  
With this, Jared opened the palm of his hand and materializing a digital device.  
  
"Whoa," he said in shock, before the digital device disappeared again.  
  
Ienji and Alec repeated Jared's sentiment. Alec realized what had happened before either of them did. "Apparently you're one of a chosen child just like Ienji, Jared. Right now I'm wondering where you got that."  
  
The two of them peered at Jared as he shook his head uncertainly. "I don't.... I don't know where I learned to do that. I...." He paused for a second, as though recalling something. "I remember now.... it was just yesterday...."  
  
Ienji and Alec listened as Jared recounted previously unknown events of the previous day; apparently Jared had had an experience similar to Ienji's.  
  
"That's why it all seemed familiar--it actually happened," Jared finished. "I don't know why I forgot all of it, though, when Ienji remembered."  
  
Alec stopped typing for a moment. "Let's approach this logically; when we compare your account of events and Ienji's, what's the difference?"  
  
"Well...." Ienji said, "I know that I was interrupted by Evan, but it looks like Jared went through the entire thing."  
  
"So maybe when the connection is made, the chosen child forgets?" Jared queried. "Do you think Evan would keep a thing like that from you?"  
  
Ienji shook his head. "No, I don't think so. I'll have to ask him, though. He said he'd be in town for a while, but I don't have a number to reach him at."  
  
There was a brief silence, during which Jared checked his watch (which had since been adjusted to the correct time). "We have five more minutes scheduled for the hour-long study room reservation."  
  
The three friends stood up, Alec flipping closed his laptop. In the course of their conversation Alec had told them that he'd keep a lid on his photos. It was their general sentiment that these things should be kept secret for the time being, at least until more could be known.  
  
As the clock struck six, each of the three went his separate way.  
  



	17. Reactionaries

Chapter Seventeen  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" he asked irritably into the phone.  
  
"There's no need to enunciate, Evan," he heard her reply. "It's literal; we've put all our resources into this. The entire co-op is working--"  
  
He couldn't help but interrupt. "Right. Right. A few dozen kids.... With all our 'resources', we can only spare to send two people down here?"  
  
"Yes," she replied shortly. "All the technophiles are working on that data you sent over the phone through last night, and the rest are either in the field setting things up, or are coordinating with those in the field."  
  
As he felt her, he suddenly realized himself. He sighed before responding. "You're right. I'm sorry, Amelia. There's so much going wrong, and although I know that everyone is working together on this, it remains difficult. Maybe I just need someone to talk to."  
  
She laughed lightly in response. "Evan, you've never needed anyone to talk to. We both know that you only called because you were pissed off at the world and need a talking wall, for which I was obliged to provide."  
  
He almost laughed at this. Instead, he said, "So the two you're sending down.... who is it, exactly?"  
  
"One's fresh out of high school, and is taking a year off. He's completed basic training for field work, and he's pretty good, although I guess you'll see next week," Amelia told him. "The other is Roger's younger brother, Jake. I don't suppose you've met him; he's a great guy."  
  
She was silent for a second. After a moment, she told him, "Mistakes are mistakes.... you did well. No one's been in that kind of situation before, but you responded well, and no one was hurt. Things will turn out...."  
  
"....All right?" he finished questioningly. "They always seem to. But this isn't routine initiation anymore, you know that. People and events have fallen into place inappropriately, I would almost say there was design in it. But...."  
  
"Destiny is dead?" she completed. Evan winced. "You could say that," he replied.  
  
"Well," Amelia said, "I know you'll be busy tracking down those kids. Keep in touch."  
  
He smiled faintly, although she couldn't see it from the other end of the phone."Yeah, of course," he said. "I'll talk to you later."  
  
"Bye," she said, and he set the hotel phone back on the hook with a light click. He gazed at the phone wearily for a moment, then sighed heavily.  
  
Evan Alterman stood up and off the bed, and slipped on his spring jacket before heading out the door of the hotel room; he had work to do.  
  



	18. The Odd Task

Chapter Eighteen  
  
_--Ienji--_  
  
Ienji opened the apartment door cautiously. Not that he felt he had much to fear from his mother, if she were home; it was just his general mood.  
  
"Welcome home, dear," he heard his mother say as he opened the door. He stepped inside and saw that she was filling out some forms on the couch. "Home already? Time goes by so quickly. Did anything interesting happen at school today?"  
  
Ienji hesitated before responding. "Uh.... yes, actually. There was a disturbance; I don't know exactly what happened. I only heard reports," he lied. "We were dismissed early."  
  
She glanced up at him and sent him a motherly smile with hint of curiosity. "Oh? I guess I'll hear about it soon enough."  
  
He nodded absently, as though in affirmation. He set his backpack aside for a moment and began his after-school ritual of taking out schoolbooks and setting them on the counter, then re-packing miscellaneous personal items.  
  
After a minute, Ienji slung it back over his shoulder, and turned to his mother. "I'm going to bike over to the library for a while longer, okay?"  
  
His mother smiled. "Fine with me. Make sure you're home in time for dinner."  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
Meanwhile, Evan had traveled back to the high school. He discovered that they had indeed dismissed the kids early, and there were quite a few cop cars around. He decided that it would be too difficult to enter in order to set up digital 'monitors' to discern digidestined from every other kid.  
  
With this thought in mind, he decided to set base in the middle school and then the secondary elementary school. The most common ages of digidestined were between nine and fourteen, but earlier that day he'd seen with his own eye the presence of at least a dozen digidestined--not potentials, digidestined--at Siojaton High School, so there was no telling how things worked.  
  
Evan suspected that the age range of potentials had been shifted from 9-14 to 12-17; he couldn't confirm it, but it would make sense if it were so. From what he knew of the patterns.... of course, he didn't know much.  
  
It was a brisk walk alongside a school field to reach the middle school. Despite the hubbub and controversy of the events in the high school, this other school appeared as normal and active as ever. He saw a fair number of cars in the middle school parking lot, and sensed that perhaps a few after-school activities had been moved from the high school to the middle school.  
  
No one stopped him as he walked through the double-door and into the main hall of the Siojaton Middle School. Taking in the sight of the decorated hallway, Evan renewed his effort to find a prime location to set up monitors.  
  
_--Ienji--_  
  
Ienji walked in a few minutes before his book-shelving shift began. As he walked up to his boss, the librarian Mrs. Fujimaka, she frowned at his arrival.  
  
"What are you doing here, Ien?" she asked him. "You called in last night to tell me you'd become ill and needed to take the day off."  
  
As she said this, he suddenly remembered talking to her last night, as though in a trance; it seemed the memory of a dream.  
  
Thinking quickly, he replied, "That's just it--the illness has passed out of me, just as quickly as it came upon me. So," he almost fumbled, "I was wondering if you still needed me for anything."  
  
In truth, he'd come to the library to research some of these strange phenomena to which he'd been introduced over the past few days--spirits, other worlds, anything that struck him.  
  
The woman smiled in pleasant surprise. "Well, Jean offered to take your shift, but if you'd like, you could move some of these heavier crates to the back. There'd be no money for the library to pay you, of course," she added.  
  
Ienji felt there was only one thing he could say. "Sure. I'd be glad to help."  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
Evan moved through the halls at a brisk pace; he attracted less attention than he would normally, he surmised, because of all the other high-schoolers who had temporarily set up shop in the middle school.  
  
He didn't need to use his GD to sense where an ideal location for the monitor would be; his empathy would do for that. Residual empathy allowed him to figure out which places were most popular for students to hang out.  
  
After a few minutes of aimless wandering, he felt much residual empathy past the door to his left. He opened it.  
  
_--Ienji--_  
  
Ienji had been directed by the other on-duty librarian, Mr. Sayomoru, to where the boxes were located, adjacent to the basement of the building.  
  
"These are the encyclopedia assortments the library ordered by catalog three months past, Ien," the man told him. "So, be careful with them."  
  
"I will," Ienji replied with a brisk nod. "Thank you, Mr. Sayomoru."  
  
The man smiled fondly at the kid for a moment before heading back to his post.  
  
Turning back to the boxes, Ienji reached to pick one up. He heaved it up with relative ease; he wasn't a weight-lifter, but he did exercise, and naturally provided for a decent amount of muscle tissue.  
  
He stepped warily as he moved the box down the narrow basement hallway and set it outside the door to the reference room. There were a few dozen boxes stacked, so he anticipated at least another half-hour of work to be done.  
  
On his third box, Ienji accidentally misstepped, and the box fell three feet to the floor as he attempted to right himself. But instead of hearing the dull thud of thick volumes, he heard a metallic clank.  
  
His task momentarily sidetracked, Ienji frowned. A metallic clink? He must have misheard. He looked over and checked the label on the return address.  
  
"It says 'Burkenstein Reference Materials, Inc.; Tokyo, Japan'," he muttered. "I must be imagining things...."  
  
Over the next thirty-five minutes, he moved the rest of the boxes into place.  
  



	19. Raphael

Chapter Nineteen  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
"Mr. Amenkara, is that you?" a voice asked behind the door as it swung open.  
  
Evan blinked. "No.... it's someone else." He stepped inside the room.  
  
It was a computer lab, he could see. Rows of disordered terminals sat upon makeshift benches and desks around the medium-sized room. Along the far wall, his back facing the tinted school windows, sat a young boy.  
  
Almost tripping over a wayward power cord, Evan stepped closer to the center of the lab, taking in the sight of it all. After a moment he decided to focus his attention on the middle schooler who sat before him.  
  
Their eyes met. The kid was short, with a slender build; he wore a loose t-shirt and shorts, and appeared around the age of twelve or thirteen.  
  
The kid's eyes swiveled back to the scree. "Well, if you're not Mr. Amenkara," he continued, "then what, exactly, are you?"  
  
"I'm nothing in particular," Evan replied. "Just stopping by."  
  
The boy turned back to him curiously. "You're SHS. Didn't they dismiss you? What are you doing here, planting explosives?"  
  
"I could say the same of you," he rejoindered. "Why are you so eager for me to leave? What are doing, hacking into the American Pentagon over there?"  
  
The boy frowned. "No," he said, "They don't have any external access. But I know a guy who has an American cousin whose friend installed a wireless transmitter in a U.S. SIPRnet terminal once, inside the Pentagon. Oh, he's in jail now for the rest of his life, though."  
  
Evan couldn't help but like the kid. "Well, don't mind me; I'm just going to be here for a few minutes." He reasoned that he'd be able to use all the terminals, boxes, and monitors to cover his activities sufficiently, so he could plant a monitor without the boy noticing; he couldn't afford to waste any more time, in any case.  
  
"I will certainly not. By the way, I'm Raphael," the boy informed him.  
  
"My name is Evan," the other replied.  
  
_--Ienji--_  
  
Finally, Ienji heaved the last box onto the top of the pile. He wasn't used to such strenuous labor, but he had enough muscle mass to handle it.  
  
He walked over and informed Mr. Sayomoru that he'd finished, and that he would be doing some research (he felt he needed to say that before he found himself volunteering for something else).  
  
The librarian smiled and said he understood, and that if Ienji wanted to know how he could help, all he need do was ask him.  
  
Bowing on his way out, Ienji took the stairs to the third floor and took a search terminal near the end of the library. He typed in his query, 'digital world', and pressed enter.  
  
He almost certainly expected to find nothing--he would be broadening his search to include the (pseudo?)science of 'empathy', and parallel worlds, and anything else he could think of. Surprisingly, that initial query did turn up a dozen results. But, it was only a children's cartoon, 'Digital Monsters'; nothing scientific or mature.  
  
Thirty minutes later, Ienji had collected a pile of books on alternate universes and 'spiritual' energies. He didn't know whether either would help him in the least, but he took spent the next two hours taking notes in quiet concentration.  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
"So," Raphael asked, "What are you doing?"  
  
Evan had already prepared a cover story. "Oh, I lost a notebook around here the other day, and I was hoping I'd be able to find it. It has all my work."  
  
The kid frowned. "Well, I'll keep an eye out for it," he said.  
  
As he said this words, Evan finished the last of the monitor preparations. It would tell him when any potentials or--heaven forbid--forged were near.  
  
Right now it was after school, so there were few kids and not much to go on, but he planned on checking the logs after school tomorrow, Tuesday.  
  
Suddenly, he sensed a pulse. Checking his monitor--he'd set it up to interface through his empathy and thereby convey abstract ideas as processed data, without anyone noticing anything--he saw a red dot.  
  
Turning around, Evan looked once more at Raphael. The kid was a potential.  
  
Instead of setting up a scan on the kid, Evan decided to get to know him. As casually as possible, he took a seat next to the boy.  
  
"Are you having more success with what you do than I with what I did?" he asked.  
  
_--Ienji--_  
  
Ienji set his notebook in his backpack before returning five out of eight books he had taken off the shelves that had subjects he felt related to what he had experienced, and learned of, in the past few days, and checked out the three remaining books for further study at home.  
  
He thanked the librarian, Mrs. Fujimaka, as he left the Siojaton Public Library out the front door and removed his bicycle from the rack. From there he pedaled through the streets back to the apartment building he and his mother lived in.  
  
Evening passed into night quickly and quietly; he almost felt that things had slown down, with the relative calmness of the night in mind. But some part of him felt that it was not over, and would never be over.  
  
Things, he felt, had only begun to develop.  
  
_--Evan--_  
  
"Success? I'd say so," the boy replied. "Right now I'm simply devising a scheme to develop a Bayesian network to process data to develop a plan for an ideal online communication server/client and medium."  
  
Evan raised his eyebrows as he examined the kid's screen. Raphael clearly was using a nix, but he didn't recognize it as any particular flavor.  
  
"What O.S.?" he asked, genuinely curious.  
  
"Oh, this is Linux, the 7.8 kernel. It doesn't have any distro in particular. I've installed the dualist system on this PC; you may have heard of it. It allows me to use an optimal filesystem structure while at the same time retaining many of the configurative benefits of older systems," Raphael replied. "But, I will not bore you any more than you would like."  
  
Evan meant to respond, but was distracted by a few lines of the screen. "If I may ask, what do those IP address correspond to?"  
  
Suddenly, the boy hit a complex key sequence, and the lines were gone. "What lines?" he replied plainly.  
  
"Oops. I didn't mean to intrude," Evan replied. "I am just lounging about. I'm getting picked up later, so I have some time to waste."  
  
He moved to leave, but Raphael stopped him. "No, no, it's fine. I like having you around here. It is nice to bring life to this place after school hours."  
  
Evan sat back down. "Okay. I was making certain that you did not mind my presence. I don't want to interrupt your work."  
  
"I have two sisters and three brothers back home," the boy replied. "I have built up a natural immunity to distraction. So it is of no consequence."  
  



End file.
